Predicting the Innovator

Who are the innovative customers for new products? Despite considerable research in this area, a striking characteristic of innovators was identified over 35 years ago. In work since often overlooked, Taylor (1977) found innovators tended to be heavy buyers of the parent category. This controversial result has major implications for both theory and practice yet has not, to our knowledge, been replicated. we therefore examine the extent to which heavy buyers dominate the innovator segment, adopting a research design that overcomes some of the limitations of Taylor’s original study, and we also extend Taylor’s work by examining heavy buyers in general rather than in a ‘category specific way’. Using a unique database we examine the behaviour of British General Practitioners in prescribing radically new drugs and me-too later entrants over an eighteen year period. we find regular replicable patterns of innovation among heavy category buyers, although they vary according to the order of entry.